“Will I see you again?” he asked Tanis.
“I’m not sure.” She sounded regretful. “I will if I ever have reason to bring anyone else here, or deliver a message from Rhea. But it’s not likely to happen often.”
“If you do come back, try to find me. And if I ever return to Crete, I’ll find you.”
“Again, not likely.” Despite the discouraging words, she stepped up and kissed him on the lips. “But I hope to see you. You have great things ahead of you, Hades.” She glanced upward at the slopes of Mount Olympos, her eyelashes lifting. “Climb.”
He climbed. Alone, in eerily silent, cold fog, he wound upward along the goat track. He found no living thing along his way, only rocks, tough little trees, and ferns. The air thinned and chilled, feeling bizarrely light in his lungs, but his legs carried him up the mountain without effort.
When he reached a pass between two boulders, a voice arrested him.
“Halt!”
It was accompanied by the unmistakable creak of an arrow being stretched into a bow. An arrow wouldn’t kill him, of course, but he didn’t like the idea of being impaled by one, all the same. He halted, hands out at his sides, and looked up.
A woman, her dark brown hair cut to her earlobes, rose from her crouch atop one of the boulders. A gray cloak the same shade as the rocks camouflaged her. Her dark eyes stayed aimed at him, as did the arrow from her long bow. She stepped soundlessly from rock to rock, descending until standing in front of him. “And you are?”
“Hades. From Crete. Rhea sent me.”
The woman lifted her eyebrows for a moment. “Did she? Why?” She sounded to be from the Greek mainland, and he found it difficult to understand her.
“Because I’m like her. She said I’d find more of you here.”
She lowered the bow. “You’re immortal?”
Though still uncomfortable with the word, he nodded. “I offered myself as the sacrifice at the palace, at Knossos. But the axe and the knife failed to kill me.”
She bobbed the arrow, still nocked. “I could test again with this.”
“If you must. I’d rather not.”
She gestured to a rock the size of a full-grown cow. “Lift that.”
He stepped to it, crouched, slid his arms around it, and picked it up.
Finally she lowered the bow. “All right. Put that down and come meet the others.”
Chapter Sixteen
WHAT ADRIAN REMEMBERED ABOUT THE next two to three decades was a mini golden age of learning. The immortals educated each other and taught the new ones who arrived, all the while expanding their understanding of their own powers and of the world at large.
Hades was the youngest immortal, of course, when he entered that collection of stone dwellings atop Mount Olympos. The two oldest, who were obviously a couple based on both their affection and their constant arguments, were Hera and Zeus. They hailed from Crete as well, and had been sent to Greece by Rhea—who, they maintained, was far older than they. Even Rhea herself wasn’t sure how old she was, but it certainly extended into the centuries. That boggled Hades’ mind, being barely seventeen himself.
Hera and Zeus were in their seventies. Poseidon and Demeter, another couple, at least off and on, were in their sixties, as was Athena. Artemis and Apollo were in their forties—Artemis had been the one aiming an arrow at him that first day, and she and Apollo behaved like the closest of siblings, though technically they weren’t. Despite their various ages, all of them looked nearly as young as Hades, and were all beautiful and fit.
“If you’re immortal, why bother posting guards?” he asked that first night.
Hera snorted. “We’re tired of big-muscled mortal idiots ambushing us just to see if they can defeat us and steal our belongings. They can’t, of course, but they’re such a distasteful intrusion.”
As things stood, legends and fanciful stories circulated about the group of “gods” living on Olympos, who sometimes made mundane appearances in nearby villages to buy food or wool or building supplies (or to visit lovers), and who invited only the most exotic and mysterious visitors to their dwellings. These guests were usually scholars or travelers who could tell them things about the world, or teach them new languages.
Sometimes the immortals were summoned by royalty in various cities, and hired to defeat a marauder or rival with their superior strength. Merely a few such jobs had supplied the little group with more jewels, clothing, and fine weapons than they would need in twenty years, and kept their homes luxuriously outfitted. Nonetheless, the average Greek’s fear and mistrust surrounding their existence made them stay apart, hidden away on the mountain.
Hera and Zeus proposed changing all that, a few months after Hades joined them.
“If we go down and live among them,” Hera insisted, “we can improve the people’s lives with our knowledge and get some proper respect. And not have to live up here among the snow and fog.” She brought up the argument regularly, tugging her woolen cloak around herself in disdain for the inhospitable weather of the mountain. The others always conceded the appeal of her proposition, but put her off by insisting on gathering more wisdom and enjoying their freedom a while longer. For, surely, if they descended to live in palaces, with mortals crawling all over as servants, their lives would quickly become a series of petitions and tedious ceremonies.
“Just ask Rhea,” Athena pointed out.
“Yet she stays on Crete, enjoying her power as priestess,” Hera returned. “Why shouldn’t we do something similar, but more openly? Proclaim ourselves as the immortals we are?”
“It seems wise to investigate our powers and limits further,” said Demeter, “rather than seek glory.”
“Speaking of powers,” Hades ventured, “there’s an odd sensation I have regarding Rhea sometimes. I can somehow tell where she is—I mean, in which direction, and roughly how far. It’s like isolating where a birdsong is coming from, sort of.” Feeling young and foolish, he blushed as they stared at him, and he added in almost a stammer, “Does—does anyone know what I mean?”
“Oh, yes.” Hera sounded almost bored, and smoothed a fold of her cloak. “Zeus and I have that. Don’t we, dear?”
“Indeed.” He smiled.
“I think we all do,” Demeter said, “with people we’ve—loved.” She and Poseidon exchanged uneasy glances and looked away again. Hades gathered their relationship was rocky at best.
“But I don’t love Rhea,” Hades said. “We barely know each other.”
Zeus chuckled. “I don’t think love is technically required, only a certain connection. If you understand me.”
Hades’ blush deepened. “No, we never…did that either. I was married, but my wife is dead, and with her…” He paused, thinking. “I suppose I felt it when she was alive, but I can’t be sure.”
“Yes,” said Demeter. “It was the same for me and my children, though it comes and goes.” She’d had children at a younger age, as had many of the others; they were grown up now and living elsewhere, probably assuming their missing parents were dead. “Perhaps there’s some kind of blood connection.”
“Oh,” Hades said in sudden understanding. “A blood connection. That could make sense. Rhea’s blood and mine must have mingled. When she sacrificed me, I mean.”
Zeus laughed. “Next time, lad, put the knives away and try it the other way. It’s much more fun.”
“But for me the sensation comes and goes, for no apparent reason,” Demeter reminded him.
Hades and the others admitted it did for them as well.
“So all we know is that our understanding and powers clearly have their limits,” she concluded.
The mystery of the sensation vanishing and reappearing was solved within the year, though. One day Poseidon strode in and announced, “Oak.”
When the others stared at him in incomprehension, he clarified, “Oak blocks the feeling of sensing one another at a distance. When the person enters a thick oak forest, or goes behind a wall of oak pl
anks—in short, when oak is between the two of you, that’s when you can’t sense each other.”
He had, he explained, discovered this while walking through a grove of oaks and thinking of various loved ones. The group of immortals easily tested it with nearby trees and wooden boxes, and found it true. It wouldn’t be the first time a plant turned out to have significant properties, but it was one of the most ordinary and commonly found examples.
Meanwhile, as far as the little group could tell, nothing could kill them. They didn’t know why they had been born this way. (And never would know, Adrian could attest from millennia in the future.) But each of them had undergone at least one injury or attack that should have killed them, only to recover miraculously fast; and none had ever caught so much as a sniffle even when plagues swept their towns. In the villages, people were already calling them “gods,” and the immortals were beginning to consider the idea. Obviously they weren’t the old gods, who’d been around forever (not that anyone had personally met them), but maybe they were some kind of new gods.
There were downsides to this invincibility. While they seemed to be able to master the living world, they had no way of knowing what happened to those who died. They all had relatives and friends who had passed on, whom they grieved for. They posed the question to each of the wise philosophers they pulled off the travelers’ road, and gathered a world of theories, but no definite answers.
Among those departed souls, Hades was sad to learn, was Tanis. Two years after arriving in Greece, Rhea herself paid a visit. He asked after Tanis, only to learn her ship had sunk on her journey back to Crete just after leaving here. All lives were lost.
As he felt the pang of grief, he acknowledged with gloom another downside to being basically young forever: there wasn’t much point in getting involved with someone who wasn’t.
Not that this stopped him or his new companions from dallying with mortals from time to time, whether chastely, romantically, or carnally. It rarely ended well.
After several years of comparing personal histories, they discovered that immortal women had no trouble conceiving or giving birth—as with other physical traumas, there was no permanent danger in it for them. But there was heartache, as they always gave birth to mortal children, who were no healthier than the average. And for the mortal women who became pregnant by immortal men it was far more dangerous: those women nearly always miscarried or underwent stillbirths, and frequently died themselves in the process. Hades’ young wife had been just one of many sad examples. The blood of mortals and immortals, it seemed, did not mix well when the mother was the mortal.
“I’m not saying we can’t have companions,” Demeter insisted to the group after they had digested this conclusion. “But for mercy’s sake, men, don’t get the girls with child.”
“It’s not as if we meant to kill anyone,” Apollo said quietly. His latest paramour had died earlier that month in a miscarriage—one of the final clues that brought the truth home to them all.
“I know,” Demeter said. “But your sorrow and apologies won’t bring them back. There are other things you can do as couples. Just do those, or we’ll have young women’s angry fathers and mothers forming an army against us.”
“All the more reason for us to live among them,” Hera pressed. “If they knew us better, they’d be less likely to fear or hate us, and likelier to forgive us our mistakes.”
“I think you just want a mortal bedmate yourself,” joked Zeus. “What, I’m not enough for you?”
The rest stayed tactfully quiet. They all knew the situation was rather the reverse: Hera was unlikely to dally with anyone, but Zeus did so almost shamelessly. If she wanted to be down among the bustling towns on a more permanent basis, it was probably to keep a closer eye on him.
Hera and Zeus performed the experiment themselves: they went to a few distant villages and pronounced themselves gods, proving it by shows of strength and invincibility. Fear soon turned to awe and delight among the villagers, especially as Hera and Zeus promised to use their knowledge and power to help the citizens improve their crops, their health, their war-waging, and whatever else concerned them, as long as the people showed them proper reverence and didn’t attempt to overthrow them. The deal was struck, and Hera and Zeus returned to Olympos to tell the happy news. It took only a few days before the rest were all convinced, and the pack of immortals descended to live among humans in a new and much grander house on the outskirts of a prosperous city, farther south on the shores of a warm gulf. They sent word to Rhea in Crete, and she soon turned over her title to one of the junior priestesses, and sailed to join them.
Hades was now in his mid-twenties, with a thicker beard and stronger muscles than before, but otherwise he looked nearly the same as he had at seventeen. And he was already being hailed as a god, and living in a more regal house than he ever expected to, with immortal and fascinating companions. Life dazzled him.
In the next several years, their searches turned up another half-dozen immortals, whom they brought back to add to their household.
Athena found Hestia, a quiet, humble servant who’d been living without aging in a rich household for decades, and emancipated her at once. Hestia, in turn, led the group to a lonely blacksmith she had heard of. He was named Hephaestus, and kept turning out beautiful jewelry and knives year after year, his skin rapidly healing all the burns he suffered from his work. Artemis brought home Ares, a soldier whose tendency to stay alive even after being run through with spears or swords had begun to look suspect in the eyes of his fellow warriors.
One morning Apollo shot an arrow through a young ruffian trying to steal his cattle. He watched in surprise as the lad climbed to his feet, yanked the arrow out of his back, and walked off without even a limp. The thief’s name was Hermes. Apollo chased after him and dragged him to meet the rest of the group—bloodstained tunic, healed arrow wound, unrepentant smile, and all.
Though Hera, in particular, raised loud objections about keeping a common thief in their midst, Zeus and Apollo talked her down. Hermes was immortal—better to have him on their side than working against them.
The immortal women accepted with a mixture of interest and irritation, for Hermes enjoyed nothing more than teasing, flattering, and attempting to seduce them, generally making himself a nuisance. Actually, Hades could attest, he did the same with some of the men. Hades shoved him off his bed more than once in the middle of the night, to which Hermes always laughed and said, “You’ll give in someday.”
No one could even ascertain his age. To one person he said he was eighteen, to Hades he claimed thirty-five, and to someone else he said seventy-two. But Hermes’ roving eye did win them a great treasure. He went out traveling soon after meeting the other immortals, and was quick to discover Aphrodite, on the island of Kypros. His charm succeeded: she agreed to come back with him.
The pair then reduced half the household (including Hades) to shocked blushes, and the other half to peals of laughter, by relating the story of their meeting.
Aphrodite, having abandoned her home village decades ago like the rest of the immortals, took up solitary residence on Kypros, and became a local legend. It was said that adolescent boys desiring to be turned into men could journey to her hut of clay and leaves near the crashing surf, and call her out to see them. If she liked a lad, she would invite him inside for the night, and dismiss the others. Her invitation was the only way into her bed. Men trying to sneak in and forcibly take what had not been offered had suffered maiming injuries or quick death at the hands of the usually gentle woman.
Those were the irresistible stories Hermes heard when he landed on Kypros, tales of beauty laced with danger, whispered to him by adolescents with lust-glazed eyes. Fearing nothing, and desiring everything, Hermes strolled out to where this legendary lover lived—a full day’s walk from the nearest town on the island—and found the hut of clay and leaves, just as promised. He circled it at a distance for a while, until a tousle-haired youth backed out of
the hut, smoothing down his tunic and speaking enraptured to the person who followed.
She was stunningly beautiful, and completely naked. Even the unflappable Hermes was caught off guard. Untangling her long dark hair with a comb, she leaned forward to kiss the lad one last time before turning him toward home. As the youth walked off down the beach, looking back to wave every few steps, Hermes regained his breath and approached the woman.
“You’re early,” she said when she saw him. “It’s only morning.”
“I’ve traveled a long way to meet you. But I can certainly wait until you’ve recovered from the night’s adventures.”
She smiled. “I need no time to recover. I’m immortal. I can last as long as you need me to.”
He stepped closer. “I’m also immortal. We shall have a contest of stamina.”
She laughed, slipped her arms around him, and accepted the challenge, not believing he really was immortal until (Hermes claimed) three days later, by which time she and he were both duly impressed.
Hermes being a habitual liar, Hades would have been skeptical of his story if she hadn’t been there before his eyes, across the room, helping to fill in the details as he related them. In figure and face, standing still and fully clothed, she was no more beautiful than any of the other goddesses. But there was something in the flick of her eyes, the lilt of her smile, and the movement of her limbs that made it distractingly easy to picture her without clothing.
A giant contest of male vanities ensued. Nearly all the gods vied for Aphrodite’s attention day and night. Hades tried not to get involved, but couldn’t help glancing at her whenever she was near. She noticed and took pity on him. He awoke one night to find her slipping into his bed, kissing his face and whispering sweet invitations. He needed no further convincing.
Persephone's Orchard (The Chrysomelia Stories) Page 14
